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Members & staff of UKIP past & present. Committed to reforming the party by exposing the corruption and dishonesty that lies at its heart, in the hope of making it fit for purpose.
Only by removing Nigel Farage and his sycophants on the NEC can we save UKIP from electoral oblivion.
SEE: http://juniusonukip.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/a-statement-re-junius.html

Sunday, 18 April 2010

UKIP: Lord Pearson exposed as a liar

Many UKIPPERS thought that Lord Pearson was a decent alternative to Farage. They have been proved wrong. He is prepared to accept illegal donations. He is prepared break electoral law. And he is prepared to lie in order to hide his dishonesty.

Pearson claimed that he had told ELCOM about the anonymous £80,000 donation to UKIP. He said that the money came from a single “bona fide” person and the Commission had “cleared” it. ELCOM has denied this. Pearson has been exposed as a liar.

Electoral law states that donations to political parties of more than £7,500 cannot be made anonymously.

UKIP is in trouble with ELCOM yet again. When will Farage EVER learn? Does he still think that he is above the law? He should remember that after Hubris comes Nemesis!

UKIP leader Lord Pearson is facing further questions over a controversial £80,000 donation given to his party by an unincorporated association which he also runs.

Pearson admitted this month that the money came from Patrick Barbour, a former Tory donor, who gave £100,000 to the UKIP boss’s unincorporated association Global Britain.

Pearson told The Sunday Times that although Barbour had not attached strings to his donation to Global Britain, he had made it clear he would be “happy” if most of it went to UKIP. In May last year, weeks after Barbour’s donation, Pearson then passed on £80,000 of the money to UKIP just in time for the Euro elections.

Electoral law states that donations to political parties of more than £7,500 must be declared and cannot be made anonymously. If “middle men” agents are involved they must tell the parties who the original donor is so that his or her name is declared to, and published by, the Electoral Commission.

Two weeks ago Pearson was caught offering an undercover Sunday Times reporter the use of Global Britain to channel a £25,000 anonymous ‘donation’ to UKIP. He also admitted that last year he had kept an £80,000 donation anonymous when they “passed on £80,000 from one person” with “no problems”.

When confronted he insisted that he had informed the Electoral Commission that the donation had actually come from a single “bona fide” person and the Commission had “cleared” it. He revealed Barbour’s identity, saying he had understood he had previously wanted to keep his identity secret. Barbour said he had left it up to Global Britain as to how the money was used.

However, the Commission last week denied having been told that the money did not originate from Global Britain. It has now placed the £80,000 donation under review and may launch a full investigation.

An Electoral Commission spokeswoman said: “UKIP told us that the donation came from Global Britain and if they had said that was an attempt to hide a donor we would have said that is against the rules. We registered it as from Global Britain because that’s where we were told it came from.”

“It is up to the parties to investigate what the source is of donations and pass on the information to us and it is their responsibility to ensure that it is not an attempt to hide a donor.”

At the same time that Pearson offered to channel a £25,000 donation using Global Britain, Stuart Agnew, a UKIP MEP, also told an undercover reporter a number of ways to avoid having a donor’s name disclosed to the Electoral Commission.

He said the real donor could make loans, or gifts, to another person who could then pass on the money in their name instead.

Agnew also told the undercover reporter that he was part paying the salary of an assistant — Peter Reeve, who is also a UKIP regional organiser — through his taxpayer-funded assistants’ allowance even though the work he did for him was “virtually none”.

This, Agnew said, was “strictly illegal” since EU funds should not be used for party political work. Reeve later said Agnew had got it wrong and he only worked for UKIP “in his spare time”.

Diana Wallis, a Lib Dem MEP who is a vice president of the European parliament, has written to the EU president calling for an inquiry into Agnew’s admission.